


The Poet and the Muse

by FanFicReader01



Series: The Library Chronicles [18]
Category: Alan Wake (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Diary/Journal, Eldritch, Mindfuck, Mystery, Nature, People, Post-Apocalypse, Probably ooc, Slice of Life, Songfic, Storms, Supernatural Elements, Surviving, Worldbuilding, Zombie Apocalypse, historical events, im sorry this might feel rushed lmao, travelling, written for my library au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27576172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanFicReader01/pseuds/FanFicReader01
Summary: The world is in utter chaos. It no longer feels ours. Nature goes rampant wherever she may please. Some towns are completely wiped off the earth like they never even existed. Others damaged beyond repair and its people fleeing. Nowhere seems to be safe enough. People speak in fear and tell stories about the tumultuous skies, how they appear green at times. Eerie, but at this point I am no longer surprised. Everything seems possible now. In a bad sense. I should pack my things. Staying too long at the lake can become dangerous.
Relationships: Barbara Jagger/Thomas Zane
Series: The Library Chronicles [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885000
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Journal Entry 1: _The world as we know it is no more_**

The world is in utter chaos. It no longer feels ours. Nature goes rampant wherever she may please. Some towns are completely wiped off the earth like they never even existed. Others damaged beyond repair and its people fleeing. Nowhere seems to be safe enough. People speak in fear and tell stories about the tumultuous skies, how they appear green at times. Eerie, but at this point I am no longer surprised. Everything seems possible now. In a bad sense. I should pack my things. Staying too long at the lake can become dangerous.

**Journal Entry 14: _A Light in the dark_**

I don’t think I would still be alive if it wasn’t for Barbara… My beloved wife and my muse forever.

Oh, Barbara, where would I be without her? Without her comforting warm arms, without her words of support and grace, without that lovely smile that could light up this darkness we’re currently in. I would simply be nothing. I would crumble and cease to exist like all those towns, wiped away by an uncaring natural force.

  
Even in this world, I can still hold onto her. And as long as she is by my side, I will remain fighting for us. And I will continue to write. Maybe more than ever, the world could use inspiriting, motivating stories.

**Journal Entry 353: _New inspiration_**

Barbara and I have finally managed to settle somewhere safe. After terrible days, _months_ it seems like nature has calmed down and with that, the people too. We have joined a small community in the woods. We live in a small cabin together. It’s not much, but we are safe and have each other. Around us are barricades against the harsh weather and vile people from the outside who have succumbed to their more primal urges.

Now that my mind has become less tense, I can write more properly again. I have even managed to write a small collection of poems! Things are looking up for once. Thanks to the quieter environment and for the never-ending support of my wife. It feels good to see her smile again. To see her hopeful and soft. She no longer has to be utterly afraid of the darkness outside the cabin. Now that we can sleep peacefully again, it is wonderful to wake up early and watch the sunlight come in, covering her beautiful skin with refreshed youth and hope. Her skin looks even softer than it already is in such wonderful light.

**Journal Entry 444: _New lows_**

Our community… it-, it’s gone. I’m still trembling as I write this down. I feel I should be doing something useful now, but all my body is able to do, is write. Write down what has happened. What is still going on. I don’t feel like luck is on our side anymore.

Some people in the community had gone mad. Friction and tension became an all-time high thing lingering into the cabins, sneaking into our heads. Residents got suspicious, fearful of each other until the entire community just fell apart. New storms didn’t help calm anybody either.

Barbara and I did what had been right: pack our bags and flee as far as we could. While some residents had turned against each other, it did give us a proper escape.

We’ve been travelling for days now. I couldn’t bring myself to write… We’re basically back at the beginning when this hellish life crashed onto this world. Not much food, people being untrustworthy or outright violent, terrible scary weather conditions.

**Journal Entry 460: _Fade_**

I do not like what is happening to Barbara. I’ve had a subconscious fear but that fear is manifesting itself before my very eyes. In the way she talks, carries herself and the way how her eyes look dull and oh so tired. In the past few days her skin seems to have hardened, roughened. Not that I dislike that, nobody can stay immune to the hostile environment, but I do dislike what this implies. I’m losing her. I’m losing my wife. And maybe secretly, I’m afraid I’ll lose my muse and words as well.

I know it sounds selfish, I mean-, it _is_ selfish of me… But I’m only human too.

All this time, I could cope. Because I had her, and I had my writing. What if Barbara can’t handle it anymore? Will I be able to handle it? Is there a way I could cheer her up?

Every night, I try promising her it will get better. But with each passing day, I hear the despondency settle in my own exhausted voice.

**Journal Entry 472: _Blind without her source of light_**

She went into the woods. Told me she just needed some air (we’ve been finding shelter in a small, tight cave just outside of the forest for a few days now). I wanted to believe her, believe that the smile she wore, wasn’t fake… But oh, how I’d been wrong. Barbara is probably never coming back to me and it’s all my fault. I don’t know what to do with myself.

I travelled the whole day but couldn’t find her. What am I to do?

What am I to do?

What am I to do?

What am I to do?

**Journal Entry 479: _Why go wander unknown worlds?_**

It has been a week without my wife. I continue searching for her. Maybe I’m slowly going insane like her, but it looks like she just vanished. In these woods, there are no signs of human life besides the flora and some wild animals. I should be lucky I haven’t encountered those… possessed animals yet, but I am prepared. I still own that butcher knife and a gun I never had to fire.

At night, however, I feel eerie. Sometimes, the skies light up in a green glow. It turns these entire woods into a spook fest. Unsettling, surreal.

I try not to give too much thought to it. After all, I’ve seen it before in this ‘new world’. But I can’t help but lament Barbara. What if she is still out there. She must be terrified. She never liked the darkness, but these gloomy impending green lights don’t make you feel at ease either.

**Journal Entry 481: _Here by the lake, what a vision you are_**

_Here by the lake, what a vision you are_

_In the light of the emerald star_

_I've come for you, my love_

Those are the first lines that came to me when I finally found her, my Barbara.

She is alive and here by my side again. Oh, what a glory, what a relief! After hours of despair of never seeing her again, I found her at this lake. A large part of it, had been dried out. Some blackish bile remained. And on the bed she sat. I ran up to her and embraced her tightly. She smiled at me.

“I knew you’d come,” she’d said.

Maybe this was a test of our faith and relationship. But we had conquered and overcome.

**Journal Entry 482: _Emerald star_**

We’d gotten back to our safe space. It was already dark when we go there. That’s when I realised that the greenish hue hadn’t disappeared once we got inside the cave. The night had settled in. The darkness swallowed us whole but the light didn’t fade.

I had asked Barbara what she was holding close to her chest. Then she revealed to me a gemstone. An emerald, as green as the skies could be. I gasped. Suddenly an unfamiliar warmth wrapped around us as well. I grew tired. Of course, I’d been searching for Barbara for days. I wanted to put it to rest now that she was here with me.

The following day, we decide to continue walking. Barbara still holds onto that stone. I’m not sure if I like it, but she seems happy and most of all _hopeful_ again. That’s all that matters, right? You want your girl to be happy.

“Thomas, I was so afraid out there, alone. But then I found this stone… And I think it can protect us.”

I had been sceptic about it, but the stone _did_ seem to bring us luck. We no longer suffered cold, uncertain nights and almost as if it had guided us, we found a new place to call our home.

**Journal Entry 507: _The Lady of the Light_**

Barbara has gotten such a glow up, it’s unbelievable. She is much more confident than before. She truly takes the lead. She is… she is even leading this new community now and I am grateful to be at her side. To see her grow and become even more beautiful than she already was. Together we’ve created a new community of respect and love and safety. With at the heart of it all, my muse.

All sorrows I had before, gone. She truly is the light of my life. My own emerald star.

**Journal Entry 577: _I can't imagine what she saw while gazing in her crystal ball_ **

There had been some uproar in our new, tightly knit community. Maybe I should not have been surprised. But I was surprised how my wife reacted. Cold, almost uncaring. Or maybe too… calculated. It had been Joy Miller, one of our first and most loyal members. Recently, she had challenged some of our rules. She even dared to say how Barbara was not the same anymore. I had called it bullshit, blamed Joy’s assumed jealousy. I feel bad for scolding the girl. She had been one of the first scared people searching for shelter. Of course, we had provided her with open arms. We saw her grow and become a confident young woman too. And now Joy’s gone. Taken by one of those possessed animals. Varmints, as we’ve come to call them.

“That’s what you get from going against _Her._ If you try to defy our rules,” Barbara had said without looking back on the mutilated corpse which we could only identify to be Joy by her clothes.

Everyone had been stunned, too afraid or too mournful to say anything.

***

Once the community had gotten more quiet, I went to Barbara. She had went to the riverbed. I asked her what she meant with _her_. Barbara then held onto her gemstone. That emerald again.

“The Emerald Star, Zane. She guides us, she guides me. Comforts me. She protects us. And I want, no-, _need_ to repay Her.”

“Joy didn’t deserve to die,” I had said almost too quickly.

“Maybe not. But who am I to judge? All I need to do, is listen and _guide_. And if She tells me that that Varmint was a justified action, then so be it.”

I could not believe my ears. Did not want to believe I needed some time alone. Did I actually lose the woman I fell in love with years ago?

**Journal Entry 589: _I gotta get away from her(e)_ **

Things have changed since the death of Joy. It is as if a veil had hung over my eyes and was now ripped away. Barbara, sometime when I look in her beautiful eyes, I see the greenish glimmer. The same that lights up the skies at night. The glow from that stone… It must’ve changed her.

_Oh Barbara, what has it done to you?_

**Journal Entry 600: _Will_ _the curse be reversed if I say it backwards?_ **

When I tried to confront Barbara about what had happened in those mysterious days when she went missing, she only sheepishly smiled at me. Too convincingly she’d pouted and questioned my loyalty and love to her. That night, I had dreamt. Or were it visions?

Barbara was at the lake, alone and afraid in the dark. Then thunder roared around the half dried up lake. Green goo bubbled to the surface and turned into a floating eye. The mysterious eye looked at the woman. And it laughed at her. Green mist wrapped around Barbara. It whispered into her ear, seeped into her skin and then I awoke with sweat on my brow and trembling arms and legs.

**Journal Entry 626: _How does a man change the universe?_ **

I tried throwing away that cursed stone. When Barbara seemed to be fast asleep, I snuck up on her. We sleep in separate rooms now. Somehow she convinced me that my energy was too hostile.

When I grabbed the stone from her nightstand, it burned. It burned, it burned. And I couldn’t let go of the gemstone. It started whispering, all too seductively.

_You can’t save her._

_You can’t save her._

_Stay with me._

_You wouldn’t want to hurt your dear Barbara._

_What would you be without her?_ **Nothing.**

When I woke up, the stone was gone. Barbara had been mournful, but eventually she got over it.

“You’re right. I do not need the stone anymore. I have _you_. You’ll always be with me, right?”

I kind of smiled. “Yes, that’s a promise. We’ll never be apart.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Journal Entry ???**

_I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am_

_I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am_

_I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am_

_ I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am _

_Aimless drifting into a far off place  
Hurtling through the vast unknown  
Staring straight into the pure, black void  
I lie awake and say your name into the night_

_All I can see are your eyes_

_Those two green emerald orbs_

**_I am only a nameless soul_ ** _  
Heading into a pure, black void  
I am only a nameless soul  
Heading into a pure, black void_

_And all I know and hear_

_Is_

**_ Follow the Emerald Star… _ **

_It’s all what I can do and understand._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the lyrics suit the story perfectly.... or is it the other way around???  
> I needed a "fun" backstory on the Emerald Star and its followers and then I realised that the story of the poet and the muse just could fit perfectly >:)  
> I hope y'all enjoyed it too

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: how many Lord Huron lyrics can I implement into this fic  
> Almost all journal entree titles are taken from Lord Huron's Vide Noir album >:)


End file.
